The BD Life Cycle is a strategic blueprint that guides an organization from an open phase of considering many possible opportunities to a targeted process of developing a proposal and securing a contract for a specific opportunity. Most international development organizations use a variation of the robust process model developed by Shipley Associates. This process of strategizing, prioritizing, and securing funding is a central part of any organization’s planning and budgeting process. Let’s dive into the six stages of the process!
Strategic planning is the start of the BD Cycle and is also a continuous activity that BD teams engage in. To start, it's essential to identify the overlap between an organization's capabilities and potential opportunities. This strategic planning stage necessitates identifying potential funders' priorities and benchmarking your capabilities against potential competitors. It's also important to position business development assets such as alliances and capital. Development of an actionable strategy and the assignment of roles is crucial.
This phase is an extension of the strategic planning stage. The focus here is on implementation of the identified strategy. Building institutional reputation as a thought leader in your respective field can significantly optimize your positioning. It's also essential at this stage to establish go/no go criteria for opportunities, build relationships with potential funders, and continuously monitor and identify specific opportunities.
This phase kicks off when a specific opportunity has been identified to pursue. This phase is about gathering and analyzing intelligence about the opportunity and making and executing a capture plan. It's also important to formalize partnerships and respond to any Requests for Information (RFIs). This phase typically culminates in a blue team review which leads to a final go/no go decision.
This phase is triggered by a donor or funder releasing a written solicitation. It starts with another Go/No Go decision and a comprehensive understanding of the solicitation. Next the proposal team, tasks, budgets, and schedules are defined. Thinking through and identifying the technical approach and win themes is crucial! This stage also includes finalizing partnerships and facilitating proposal reviews (pink, green, red, and gold team reviews). This phase concludes with the submission of a compliant, competitive, and timely proposal package.
Even after the proposal has been submitted, there are still several key actions to finalize a contract. These include participating in oral response rounds, responding to funder questions, reviewing and negotiating the contract document, preparing for project launch, and documenting lessons learned to improve future bids.
Sometimes in business development, we think of a signed contract as the end of our job. But in reality, project implementation is an opportunity to position for future funding and refine our strategy! It's not just about delivering on contractual obligations, but also about learning from experience to increase the odds of success in future endeavors.
In an environment where BD teams jump from one live proposal to the next, it can be easy to fail to dedicate time and resources to each phase of the BD life cycle process, but making sure to invest in each of the six stages of is crucial to sustainable growth and success.
Stay tuned for more detailed lessons and resources for each of these stages!